Choose tools you'll use.

Learning about the front-end can seem like a daunting task these days — especially if you’re a beginner. It’s easy to feel like you have to master a thousand different tools and technologies just to get started. The good news is, this isn’t the case.

If you’re new to front-end development, I suggest staying close to the grain: just use HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Build with them, learn them inside out, experiment with them. These languages have some amazing primitives that we sometimes forget the raw power of.

As your familiarity with these languages improve, you can then add tools and abstractions into the mix when you’ve confirmed they improve your productivity and help you manage complexity.

Thorough experience with the fundamentals will make it easier for you to pick up Sass, JavaScript tooling, build process and the other tools we use to build larger projects these days.

Signed — someone who burns most of their calories at the gym untangling headphones.

This thought was written by Addy Osmani and first published on Wednesday, 26 March 2014.

Dive Deeper

Swim In The Stream

A stream of all the thoughts published on the Pastry Box Project is available. Keep it open somewhere, and lose yourself in it whenever you feel like it.

Meet Your Hosts

There are not only pieces of software talking to each other behind this website. There are humans too. The Pastry Box is brought to you by Alex Duloz and it is edited by Katy Watkins.

Stay Tuned

You can follow @thepastrybox on Twitter. For direct inquiries, get in touch with @alexduloz or @_KatyWatkins. Alternatively, you can send an email to “hello”, followed by the project’s Internet address.